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Valve Finally Takes On Steam User Review Score Manipulation (eurogamer.net)
Valve is taking a step to stop developers from artificially inflating review scores on Steam. From a EuroGamer report: Valve just changed the way Steam user reviews work -- and it's certainly set the cat among the pigeons. In May, Valve updated Steam so that it highlighted recent reviews on games. The thinking behind this change was sound: it wanted to better show the current state of a game, many of which evolve quickly as developers issue updates. Now, though, Valve is changing the default review score that shows up at the top of each product page -- the one developers and potential customers put so much stock in -- so that it does not include reviews written by those who obtained the product through a Steam key. What this means is that reviews penned by those who got a game after backing it on Kickstarter, for example, or via a developer's website, do not affect the Steam user review score. Again, the thinking behind this change is sound. Valve knows that some developers were gaming the system -- that is, they were giving keys to friends or shady paid services in exchange for positive reviews.
... it does not include reviews written by those who obtained the product through a Steam key. What this means is that reviews penned by those who got a game after backing it on Kickstarter, for example, or via a developer's website, do not affect the Steam user review score. Again, the thinking behind this change is sound. Valve knows that some developers were gaming the system -- that is, they were giving keys to friends or shady paid services in exchange for positive reviews.
Although certainly a valiant effort, one unintended result is that it will ignore reviews from people who purchase keys via Humble Bundle or other third-party stores. Perhaps that's a negligible portion of the total, but for some games, it may not be. For example, Humble frequently puts up indie bundles for a few dollars, including games that many people wouldn't necessarily buy individually on Steam (because of, for example, the lack of reviews). But at $10 for two games you want and three you've never heard of, you figure, why not? If you end up liking one of those games, your review won't matter... again making it difficult for hidden gems to get a foothold.
I do not agree with this change. You can buy legitimately buy steam keys from many different retailers, like Amazon, Humble Bundle, etc. Why should I (and many many other people) be treater differently based on where we purchased the key from? We are all Steam users.
People who buy a game through Kickstarter or BundleStars or Humble are not friends of the developers or "shady paid services". In fact Kickstarter backers are probably more likely to give negative reviews because they bought into the Kickstarter hype that could never be delivered.
The other issue arises when developers decide to screw over the original backers. Release the bare minimum to get their kickstarter payments, then do a 180 on all their promises (because who cares about the original backers, they already got their money from those guys. Time to find a new audience).
Not only 3rd-party bundles... I guess this also goes for buying a games in a retail store and registering the CD key on Steam... hmmm...
one of my initial thoughts as well.
I suppose a better way to deal with the problem is to throw out reviews that are tied to a clearly inactive steam account.
A person who actually uses steam will have recorded play histories and times. A bullshit ratings inflation service will have hundreds of dummy accounts that they use to inflate ratings with, and little to nothing else. If those accounts need actual play history, especially recent play history (given valve's stated goals with this to capture changing ratings over time), then the cost of these ratings inflation services will balloon.
If there is a game on steam with no reviews, best to read other review sites first -- and make your own determination that whatever the publisher is releasing on steam, is the same product that was shipped through other channels.
I applaud this change by Valve, because now you know the scores you see, are reflective of what you'll actually get _on_ Steam.
If the game is good, it will receive some more attention after a Humble Bundle, not counting the Humble Bundle itself. Those will be buyers who have heard recommendations from their friends who bought the game in a Humble Bundle. This, in turn, means the new buyers will be more likely to give good ratings for the game than a random person. Sure, the rating count will be lower, though, if the Humble Bundleers' reviews are not counted in the total number.
How do you know if the game on Steam, matches (exactly) what you got on the CD? However, if you download and run the binaries from Steam (and not the CD), then you may have a point.
I think Valve should also use the "play-time" as a metric for weighting scores as well as the source of installation.
Am very, very bored of the "Look for the lowercase L" copypasta spam everywhere, or ASCII tanks or whatever the current fad will be. Being copy/paste it is surely easy to detect and autoremove. This spam posts star ratings too, which will contribute to the overall standing of the game even though it's just gibberish postings.
How do you know if the game on Steam, matches (exactly) what you got on the CD?
What CD? The only thing included in my retail copy of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a piece of paper with a Steam key on it.
Which my review of will no longer be counted apparently.
Even if I purchased the game off HumbleBundle/gmg/g2a; I'm still getting a better deal than purchasing off Steam, so that would make me less likely to complain over the quality of the game compared to a full priced copy from steam.
Although certainly a valiant effort, one unintended result is that it will ignore reviews from people who purchase keys via Humble Bundle or other third-party stores. Perhaps that's a negligible portion of the total, but for some games, it may not be. For example, Humble frequently puts up indie bundles for a few dollars, including games that many people wouldn't necessarily buy individually on Steam (because of, for example, the lack of reviews). But at $10 for two games you want and three you've never heard of, you figure, why not? If you end up liking one of those games, your review won't matter... again making it difficult for hidden gems to get a foothold.
Ok... They are NOT stopping people from playing those games OR using steam keys. They aren't even stopping those people from posting user reviews. They are just taking those specific reviews out of the total score shown for the game. That's it.
If I read and understood everything correctly, it does not throw out these other reviews it simply does not count those towards the average score given to a game. So you can go in and review the game for others to read, it just won't get totaled with the others.
Looking at the big picture, how often do you think legit, 3rd party review sources would dramatically influence an average score anyway? If the average Steam user thinks a game is great, chances are the average person that gets their key from some other source will have similar thoughts.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Good. Fuck humble bundle for selling out and selling steam keys instead of DRM-free games.
I got burned on the recent Sierra bundle, because why the fuck would old-school games NOT be DRM-free? I didn't even look for the steam/DRM-free icons, because there was no reason for me to assume anything other than DRM-free. I already HAVE all of them DRM-free, FFS!
I immediately realised after I had paid that they were only selling keys and not games, and demanded my money back.
On the contrary, this allows a game to be evaluated on its own merits.
If the devs promised all of heaven and earth to kickstarter, but only deliver a decent game ... original backers are going to slam it. See _No Man's Sky._ It's not a terrible game, but it over-promised and under-delivered. But it's not a bad game. Average to middling. Definitely better than the 35% it currently holds.
That's a bit of an extreme example, but the concept holds true for any game.
This signature is false.
Just pirate the thing. If it's not crap. Buy it.
Reviews are totally useless now from paid reviews, fanboys, ip defenders and generally clueless people.
Not worth your time.
one of my initial thoughts as well.
I suppose a better way to deal with the problem is to throw out reviews that are tied to a clearly inactive steam account.
A person who actually uses steam will have recorded play histories and times. A bullshit ratings inflation service will have hundreds of dummy accounts that they use to inflate ratings with, and little to nothing else. If those accounts need actual play history, especially recent play history (given valve's stated goals with this to capture changing ratings over time), then the cost of these ratings inflation services will balloon.
That suggests an idea that they should be doing already, with data they already have access to: rather than providing a single rating score (or even two with "recent" and "overall"), provide a graph of average rating vs. time played. If the average score among people who've played it less than 20 minutes is 4 stars, but the average score among people who've played it two hours is 2 stars, that's a lot more indicative of rating inflation and what the real game is like... Conversely, if the average score among short-term users is low, but the score shoots up among people who stick with it, that may indicate a difficult learning curve that most people give up on, or may indicate that it's a niche title only for users really into that genre, etc., etc. Either way, it would be very useful information to have.
I'd chime in and note that I have over 900 games and absolutely none of them have been bought directly through Steam. Now, some have been added to my account through the Steam API (while that was available), but that's a small minority of my games. Having said that, I've also never given a review for a game so the net effect might be nothing for me in the long term.
As for another post about basically word-of-mouth, after-bundle, purchased-through-steam games, that's a great way to get better reviews if a game is really good and to boost scores. But terrible games? [Most] People aren't going to go out of their way to buy a game just to write a review about how terrible it is because a friend told them about it. So, unless it's a "my friend said it was good, but it actually sucked", this is likely to have the reverse effect.
The real issue, perhaps, is that the only reason I (and others) have game counts like 900 is because effectively games are being given away to (hopefully) indirectly boost review scores and/or word-of-mouth. Whether it's actually free or $0.25, do we hold these reviewers as worth less in their opinion? Wouldn't it almost be the opposite because they've got 900 games and hence a much better appreciation on what's out there? Again, I've yet to write any reviews. Mostly because of Sturgeon's law, I know there's probably only 90 really good games in my collection. Well, a 5 star review isn't going to do a good job at capturing the good games, is it?
Or put more simply, this is the (true) gamers gate allover again and the underlying question of using a numerical or any other ranking system for games. And I say this even though I frequently uses Steam scores to decide whether a 10 game, $2.99 bundle is worth it. :)
How do you know if the game on Steam, matches (exactly) what you got on the CD?
What CD? The only thing included in my retail copy of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a piece of paper with a Steam key on it. Which my review of will no longer be counted apparently.
I bought Fallout 4 and Far Cry Primal from Amazon on Prime Day and got actual CDs in the mail. Surprisingly, the CD versions were slightly cheaper than the digital download versions. I just had to wait 2-3 days to get them.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Isn't that a good thing though? If you didn't by the game on Steam, why should you be able to contribute to the rating on Steam? Amazon does the same thing, it's called a verified purchase. To allow anything else is opening up the system for abuse.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I think it misses the point of "reviews"
Here's how I'd fix it:
- Steam keys generated upon request (eg by the developer) to give to reviewers, friends, family, etc) before the game is released are weighted zero, and stay zero for at least 60 days after the game is made generally available.
- Steam keys generated for Kickstarter, Patreon, Humble Bundle, GOG(cross-distribution keys) and the developer's own store are weighted zero for 7 days after the game is "made available" for purchase at a version 1.0 (Eg no alpha/beta/demo/endless-beta's) and then made public.
- All steam purchases that are "refunded" are weighted zero.
- All steam purchases/keys that post a review before 80 hours of play are weighted zero.
- All steam games that have a "game completed achievement" will lower the weighting of reviews from people who do not complete the game.
- If the developer changes the games difficulty, the review score resets to the new version, (previous review scores are then frozen) and players who previously reviewed the game have to play the game again before their review counts again. This way the reviews always reflect the current or last version of the game. This would also disincentive removing features, while incentivizing adding new content for free.
Isn't that a good thing though? If you didn't by the game on Steam, why should you be able to contribute to the rating on Steam? Amazon does the same thing, it's called a verified purchase. To allow anything else is opening up the system for abuse.
It's still a verified purchase... You get a Steam key on Humble (and other stores) that you then have to redeem at Steam, download the game from Steam, launch the game via Steam, etc. Steam sure as hell knows you have the game.
Actually, yes, that's exactly what I did.... twice.
The Fallout 4 Pip-boy edition, which comes with CDs and steam key, I installed by Steam download (because my internet connection is faster than my optical drive) and just a few days ago I read something about being able to register Games for Windows with Steam. So I took my dusty Supreme Commander with Forged Alliance bundled CD's, saw a weird looking (for Steam-key, weird looking) CD code on one of its booklets and Io and Behold, it registered this time. I did a shift-del of my ancient-half-patched SupCom folder and re-downloaded the always up-to-date Steam version. Steam usually == happy gaming experience... but with some things I do wonder...
I stopped buying from Humble for this reason as well. I don't know that I'm quite so angry about it, bu I'm certainly not going to give money to them when I can get the same service directly from Steam.
, one unintended result is that it will ignore reviews from people who purchase keys via Humble Bundle or other third-party stores.
This is not an unintended effect per se; because it should have NO effect.
Why, for example, would people who buy steam keys on greenmangaming or desura or whatever review games statistically differently from people who buy them on steam directly.
I can't really imagine any reason why people who bought a title on storeA would systematically rate a game higher or lower than if they bought it on storeB. It is exactly the same game, and they get it on steam either way so its even the same platform. So yes, even if a game sold 50% of its copies on storeA and 50% on steam you are not counting half the reviews when forming the rating... but the rating itself should be the same.
But at $10 for two games you want and three you've never heard of, you figure, why not? If you end up liking one of those games, your review won't matter... again making it difficult for hidden gems to get a foothold.
Right. But are you statistically likely to like the game more than the people who actually did buy it on steam? Assuming you are reviewing honestly, at best you will add to the number or reviews, but won't change the actual rating. Adding to the total number of reviews is 'good' -- i do generally think more of a game with 10,000 positive than 10 positives, but if the same mechanism that lets a few thousand humble bundle users leave a review is also abused to leave 10s of thousands of 'fake reviews' by developers than its not really a win to include the humble bundle users.
Plus as a potential buyer... on some level knowing that humblebundle users are filtered out is actually a good thing... because i know they tend to be a lot more charitable even to the duds...
I got this game for free in a bundle; tried it out, cool concept, it amused me for 10 minutes so was good value 10/10.
or even...
i got this game for free... it sucked total ass; [...] I'm enjoyed writing this scathing review of it quite a bit though. So enjoyment vs money spent... win! 10/10.
The signal to noise ratio from humble bundle keys is so high that filtering that crowd out is surely a big improvement.
As to the problem of getting hidden gems more exposure... that's a tough problem, but reducing the amount of turds floating to the top on the backs of developer fraud and humblebundle pranksters isn't going to hurt.
So you have to play through 80 hours of a crappy game that only serves 30 minutes of actual content to be rated? This seem a bit draconian and off. If a game isn't good within 2 hours of play maybe don't count it, but 80 hours? FFS only fans are going to leave reviews.
Policies intended to prevent "gaming the system" always have the side effect of shutting out a few legitimate cases. They are good policies if those cases are small and the gain is large.
They can add up though. One example would be the collection of laws that regulate asset allocation following a divorce. Each provision had good motivation, but they add up to a tremendous bias in favor of the woman, leaving men with long-lasting, retirement-destroying, quality-of-life destroying financial obligations. The net result is the current marriage strike (on the part of men), which definitely qualifies as unintended harm.
How about they take on the cheaters in-game? Oh wait, there's no money in doing that for them. Cheaters are great for Valve, they eventually get caught (6 months, 1yr later) and then they're forced to buy the game again.
It's unfortunate CSGO is slowly going down the drain due to rampant cheating.
Except No Man's Sky wasn't kickstarted.
As to the problem of getting hidden gems more exposure... that's a tough problem, but reducing the amount of turds floating to the top on the backs of developer fraud and humblebundle pranksters isn't going to hurt.
I've been thinking about this one. Right now, every time I click through Steam's suggested game list, it includes 3 indie games "because they are popular" that on every detail I read on the Steam page presented to me is not worth the hard drive space to install, and absolutely not worth the $9.99 listed price. Nearly all of the big-name "because they are popular" entries do not interest me at all, but the indie games that get pushed at me are quite definitely not "hidden gems."
If the absolute indie-trash didn't comprise a significant portion of my discovery queues every time I click that link, then what indie games do show up would stand out more, even if just for having a $9.99 price instead of $59.99 and $200 in DLCs.
A higher density of honest reviews benefits consumers, and if a game is good, what's best for the consumer is best for the developer. If you think something would entertain people who do not know about it, find people, show it off, and tell them where to get it. In-person suggestions (ye olde "word of mouth" marketing) are still the strongest form of advertising. Playable demos follow a bit behind, and Steam review ratings are barely better than billboards.
It would've been smarter for them to have built in a seller code into the product key system so they could know more clearly where the key came from. Then, if some reviewer are suspected as illegitimate, they can trace the key's source, without necessarily having to block all Humble Bundle purchasers' reviews from counting.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
Where is Half-Life 2 - Episode 3?
Haven't bought anything from the Steam store or Valve since that crap.
No Man's Sky is a terrible $60 game. It's a tech demo for an important aspect of a game. As a stand-alone product, it's a neat little $10-20 indie effort that you'd wait to buy on sale for $5.
(Of course, as a console game it's much worse, since it crashes frequently - all the downsides of PC gaming - but you can't change the graphics settings to something reasonable - so all the downsides of console gaming too.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So lets see if I've got this right. You don't care because you buy your games elsewhere?
Why did you bother posting?
As long as the gaming population which purchases from Steam is not statistically different from the gaming population which purchases from other sources, banning the latter group won't change the review statistics they collect. All it does is eliminate a sampling population that Valve has no quality control over.
It's like taking samples to test for air quality. The samples you collect and the samples other people collect from the same location will yield the same results. But if you know and trust your sampling methodology, while you suspect someone else is manipulating the results, you can improve the accuracy of your measurements by banning the suspect samples.
Check valve is best valve
What CD? The only thing included in my retail copy of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a piece of paper with a Steam key on it.
Which my review of will no longer be counted apparently.
People still buy PC games in boxes in the 21st century? I'm surprised every time I hear this. You get nothing of value in the box any more, except maybe with some indie games. Oldschool games, sure, CDs are useful for games GOG doesn't have yet. Just find the patch online somewhere and you can run the game, at least once you escape Config Hell. But recent AAA games? None of that shit runs without a server playing nice. Once EA (or whoever) turns off the servers, you have a coaster anyway. Just buy the thing online.
And anything GOG has (and they do have some new games - more and more indie devs), you want to buy from them to begin with, to ensure no DRM. No install media needed, just backup their zip file.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Actually using Steam I didn't noticed that reviews didn't mattered.
I did notice that you could change to get only Steam purchases or only keys or both and the same for languages (which isn't even based on language but the origin of the writer / language of the client / OS, I get very few reviews from Swedes though sometimes written in English if I go with the default (though my Windows and Steam is set to English so maybe just if I'm not logged in on the web or something.)
Because they are connected and you'll get updates through Steam and so on, It will be the same.
Indie games and Humble Bundles. There are plenty of Indie games that don't have shit for reviews until they are included in a bundle because they simply got lost in a crowd. With these changes even if the majority says its a really fun game their opinion won't count if it was part of a Humble Bundle which is just bullshit, especially when a lot of indie games get shit on at release because of bugs that may have been fixed ages ago so those old reviews no longer reflect the current game.
If they want to do this with rinky dink sites or keys coming straight from the devs? Well and good but the HBs are pretty damned well known and hugely popular so I don't think they should be affected by this rule as it kills a lot of legit reviews from counting.
And for anybody that says "it shouldn't count because the HBs are cheap" well why stop there? Why not ban those reviews from Steam sales counting in the overall score and only count those that paid full price?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If the devs promised all of heaven and earth to kickstarter, but only deliver a decent game ... original backers are going to slam it.
I'd argue that is information relevant to the review though because those same devs may be continuing to claim they will deliver amazing new features etc. in the future and so those contemplating a purchase should know that they have a history of not delivering.
The best solution is to come up with what you think is a better algorithm and then display BOTH results. This way people can judge for themselves which score is most useful in a particular circumstance. In fact this would give you some idea which games devs were manipulating their reviews which is very useful information if you are considering a purchase.
This might be intentional on the part of Steam to discourage publishers - especially smaller publishers - from selling their products via HumbleBundle, Bundlestars, CDKeys or any other venue since Valve gets no (or much less) revenue from sales made outside of Steam. These other markets are important to smaller developers, who want to make their game as widely available as possible, but if it costs them recognition on Steam - the Walmart of digital PC game distribution - then they might think twice about selling anywhere but through Valve's storefront.
I'm not saying that this change to review policy was made by Valve to purposely limit developer's options but I have little doubt it was seen as an added benefit. As people become more comfortable with digital distribution, Valve is increasingly becoming less essential; there's no reason a person can't buy and download the game from any other service just as easily and many developers have considered rolling their own storefront rather than sharing their profits with Valve. Valve needs to ensure that they have enough extras to offer both developers and customers that both /want/ to use Steam rather than the alternative. This move just helps protect one of Steam's most valuable features: user reviews.
But you didn't buy it from the Steam store.... right?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
It wouldn't help much. There are companies that sell positive reviews, and probably have a tool to fool the system into thinking the game they are playing is active (or just ask the developer to add a startup configuration app for the game). They will have active accounts (although you could flag them as having a large steam library of product-key activated games).
No one cares that you don't use Steam.
Congratulations on your shit post.
You are a waste of natural resources.
Steam monitors achievements as well.
While it is probably trivial for the developer to add an inexpensive way to trip achievement activations based on time the game is running, that would produce a predictable pattern of achievement activations, which can be detected and enforced against.
Did you buy the game to play it or to review it?
But why should that have anything to do with whether your opinion of the game is valid? You would have a point if the goal was simply to shit on people who buy the game at retail or in bundles. But if it's about making the reviews relevant or fair, it seems misguided because many indie games in particular do sell majority of their units in a bundle. As an indie developer, I know this from experience - Steam store by itself only presents the top 0.1% of indie games, so for the vast majority of indie games there are no customers who found and bought the game directly from Steam and reviewed it. Are all these games going to be unrated now?
I love No Man's Sky. I haven't played it at all, but it's responsible for this, which is probably more amusement than I've gotten out of some games I've actually bought.
I would much rather trust the signal-to-noise ratio of a thousand reviewers who bought a game at Humble, than the two reviewers who bought a game directly on Steam. Larger samples give you better data.
At this point, I pretty much only buy GOG games with an occasional Steam game thrown in by accident more than anything else.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The reviews can still be shown - they just don't contribute to the overall score.
I play almost all indie games and, yes, I do buy through the humble bundle. I like early access and seeing what a game will become. I have ran into four or five really bad purchases where the reviews showed them as stellar, but the game was absolute garbage. This is a real problem for steam users and while I think the implementation might be a bit off (might make more sense to give a heavier weight to purchased copies rather than discount gift keys altogether because indie bundle and all), the idea that they care shows they're moving in the right direction.
Your opinion is still valid and displayed, it's just not included in the overall score.
Steam doesn't know if a key obtained elsewhere was paid for (as part of a bundle or otherwise) or was given out for free to get a good review. They can only track purchases on their store.
It's about how much they can trust those reviews.
I'd rather they do something about joke reviews of things like educational/kid's games and non-game software. It's completely useless for things like that.
There are no different classes of Steam keys at the moment - a key generated for Kickstarter is the same as one generated for your mother. No distinction can currently be made. The time delay seems pointless - devs are complaining that the lack of reviews is preventing their game from being found (which will be the case if they're zero weighted). Allowing reviews the devs have paid for after X days just goes back to the original problem.
Some games are refunded because they show their flaws very early on, or won't even run. Seems appropriate to have in the overall score.
80 hours play is ridiculous. Many games won't even offer this - some are complete, worthwhile experiences in only a handful of hours.
In a similar vein people do not need to complete something to form an opinion of it. The last half of a Call of Duty title is likely very similar to the first half of it.
I'm a little confused by your last point. I'd say the recent overall score they introduced in the last review system update already addresses the issue of games changing over time (or just being interpreted differently over time). Are you advocating letting devs wipe the slate clean by issuing an update? Seem like this would be a disincentive to make any updates at all after launch if it'd wipe out previous review scores.
Spam in reviews is a fundamentally different issue than spam in emails. With email, it's a fairly major failing if you throw out non-spam. With reviews, throwing out some percentage of valid reviews isn't an issue as long as it doesn't affect the aggregate score.
Valve is data-driven enough (and fairly opposed to change) that they've probably got pretty solid numbers to back up the decision.
Time played is easily inflated. You don't need to actually be in-game for Steam to think you're running the game, e.g. IdleMaster.
It would.
ACE magazine used to have a form of this in their Predicted Interest Curve, with their estimate of a game's hold over a minute, hour, day, week, month and year; but of course basing it on real measured data would be even better.
So, buying a game from steam typically costs Australians 100% more than buying from a brick and mortar store, but i insist on purchasing games through steam keys so i can have my say. But because i buy these steam keys from 3rd parties, my reviews don’t count any more. Fine, Valve has a new date with the ACCC
Thanks fellas!
-GabeN
I do understand achievements have a fairly vocal fan base, but you must realize that the vast majority of players are completely apathetic towards them. Most people pick up achievements like they pick up dogshit - accidentally with the bottom of their shoe.
And how often are those bundle's created?
I'm not arguing it's a perfect system, just trying to put into perspective how rare this new system could negatively impact an otherwise good title.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
No knowledge of this steam or the other thing mentioned. Is it critical to life?
Regards Eion MacDonald
Uhhhh a couple times a month? I have something like 60+ indie games and I have ONLY bought about 1 in 5 indie HBs, hell the one they have RIGHT NOW is a indie Gamemaker Pro bundle as you can see here so I'd say its a hell of a lot.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.